The next job: Delivering donations

Nov. 14, 2012

Written by

Kirk Moore

@KirkMoore

In a warren of rooms at the old Stafford town hall in downtown Manahawkin, groceries are stacked on shelves to the ceiling. Volunteers fold and stack clothing as residents from the town’s bayside neighborhoods trickle in, looking to start replacing — as best they can — what they lost to superstorm Sandy.

“It’s really a matter of days before it gets cold,” said Betti Anne McVey, the township’s recreation director and now coordinator of the Stafford Storm Recovery Center. “We have coats in this room, and when that northeaster was coming last week, they just about cleaned us out.”

“We’ve had hundreds of volunteers through here,” McVey said, as women dropped off more bags of food at the center at 775 East Bay Ave. When residents come for the first time, she said: “They have a look in their eyes like they’ve been hit in the head with a brick. They get what they need, and in a few days they’re back here volunteering.”

Two weeks after record-setting tides inundated neighborhoods all along the 42-mile length of Barnegat Bay, community groups and churches are stepping up to the challenge of getting hundreds of tons of donated clothing, food and household items out to people who need them. Supplies have been pouring in from all over the eastern United States, and finding storage space and directing goods where they are needed is a major logistical issue in the recovery effort.

“Now that people are just starting to go back, they’re going to see what their needs are,” said Jim Ricci, business administrator at the Church of Grace and Peace in Toms River. “We need organizations who can come in, take this stuff in bulk, and make sure it gets to the people who need it.”

The church at 1563 Old Freehold Rd. in Toms River was already operating the second-largest food bank in Ocean and Monmouth counties before the storm hit, and it’s open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, Ricci said.

“We’re looking to expand into evenings, but we need volunteers,” Ricci said, adding volunteers can call the church office “or they can just show up” to sign into a database for scheduling tasks.

(Page 2 of 2)

A number of Ocean County churches organized as the Church of Ocean County United, setting up a website, JerseyShoreUnited.org, to help plan distribution efforts, Ricci said. In southern Ocean County, church groups pitch in to help municipal officials supply a big retail-level distribution center with food, water, cleaning supplies and clothing for flooded-out residents of Little Egg Harbor, Bass River, Eagleswood and Tuckerton.

“We’ve had an outpouring from all the people in the community and from out of state,” said Leanne Nielsen, coordinator of the Pinelands Community distribution center that’s open from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily at 200 Mathistown Rd. in the Great Bay Plaza shopping center. Nielsen documents donors’ arrivals in pickup trucks, minivans and big rented trucks, and posts the photographs to the recovery effort’s Facebook page, We Love 08087 (the township Zip code). The deliveries have come from Albany, N.Y., North Carolina, and Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

The Little Egg center has gotten enough supplies to share, sending truckloads to Brick and Atlantic City as communication and coordination between the pantry organizers gets better, Nielsen said.

The Pinelands community site will be open as long as it’s needed, organizers said. “Once people start getting their homes back together, they will really need this,” said Little Egg police Lt. Tom Williams.

Volunteer Peg Fasano said the help is urgently needed in a community where old-time self-reliance is part of the culture. When the power went out, all that frozen venison and clam chowder went with it, she said.

But volunteers still need to check identification and Fasano said they’ve caught on to some people coming back repeatedly for choice items. “People who need it, need it,” she said firmly. “Someone’s got to say something.”

On Mantoloking Road in Brick, Jersey Shore Bait and Tackle has been maintaining a supply site out of a trailer at 561 Mantoloking Rd., said volunteer Chris Spagnuolo.

“We are starting to wind down, but we still have tons of clothes,” Spagnuolo said. “All the fishing community, especially Cape May, have been amazing. We had 50 people down here the other day from Pennsylvania. We had one man who drove all the way from Willmette, Ill. to donate stuff.”